The Pawn pbf-1

by Steven James

I could tell which car was hers. A team of crime scene technicians was already hard at work on it, looking for fibers, dusting for prints. Near them, surrounded by a cluster of state troopers, stood a guy who looked about eighteen years old, dressed in high tops, faded blue jeans, and a Detroit Pistons Starter jacket. He was staring off into space like he was either in shock or slightly stoned.

  “That’s him?” groaned Lien-hua.

  “I guess so,” said Ralph. “Want me to go at him?”

  “Let me,” I said.

  We walked over to him, and I extended my hand. “I’m Patrick,” I said, leaving off my last name. College students tend to become suspicious of those who give both names. It seems like a power play. I didn’t want to distance myself from him right off the bat. “Are you Andy?”

  He nodded and shook my hand.

  “Good.” I looked around and then back at him. “You saw something here in the parking lot earlier tonight. Is that right?”

  He avoided eye contact. He didn’t trust me yet. “I don’t know,” he mumbled. “I’m not really sure. Should I be talking to a lawyer or something?” He was stumbling all over his words.

  “You don’t need to talk to a lawyer unless you have something to hide,” Ralph interjected, narrowing his eyes. “You don’t have anything to hide, do you?”

  “No.” He answered a little too fast, which meant that he did.

  “Well, then, there’s nothing to be nervous about,” I said. “We just want to know what you saw. That’s all. Then you can go meet up with your friends to finish watching the Pistons school the Hornets in tonight’s preseason game.”

  He stared at me suspiciously. “How did you know that?”

  I pointed to his jacket. “Detroit plays Charlotte tonight. You keep trying not to look at the four guys in the crowd behind me but doing it anyway, and you’ve checked your watch three times since I got out of the car. Look, I just want to know what you saw, the best you can remember.”

  He still looked a little lost.

  I looked at my watch. “Probably still in the second quarter.”

  That seemed to help him focus. “Well, I came out of the mall, right, and um, I saw this girl who looked pretty cute and so-”

  “You were following her,” interrupted Ralph.

  I glared at him, and he backed off.

  “No, I mean, why would you say that?” Then he turned to me. “Why would he accuse me of that?”

  “Andy, you’re rubbing your fingers together. You’re shifting your weight back and forth from one leg to the other. You won’t look me in the eye. You’re nervous, maybe scared that if you admit you were following her, you’ll become a suspect. But you’re not in trouble with us. We have no reason to think you wanted to harm her; but someone might have hurt her, Andy. Her name is Jolene. The girl’s name is Jolene.”

  He looked back and forth from me to Ralph, then sighed heavily. “OK. I was following her, but I wasn’t trying to do nothin’. I was just, you know, I thought she was cute and stuff.”

  “Tell me about the guy you saw. The one who was standing over here”-I walked toward the fifteen-year-old sedan-“by her car.”

  He looked confused. “Yeah, that’s where he was standing. How did you know?”

  “Sightlines,” I said. “Here you’re not in the pool of light from the parking lot lights, but you can see both directions on the road, and you have easy access to Jolene’s car.” I glanced at Ralph. I knew he was thinking, This is a waste of time, Pat. Get the kid to talk or let me at him. I’ll make him talk.

  I walked back over to Andy. “Now, please. Just tell me what you saw-”

  “He killed her, didn’t he?” Andy started shaking.

  At first I thought I should lie, tell him that everything was OK, that the girl was fine. But then I decided to play it straight and give him the God-honest truth. Every minute we wasted meant less chance of finding her alive. “He might have, Andy. Or he might want to. Help us find him. Please. Help us protect her.”

  A look of horror swept over his face. “Oh, man. She’s dead. I can’t do this.”

  Lien-hua put her hand on his shoulder. “My name is Lien-hua, Andy, and I know you think that you didn’t see anything important. But I want you to think back. How tall do you think the man was? Was he much taller than her or the same height? Was he Caucasian or black, or maybe Hispanic? Did you maybe see his face?”

  He finally seemed to regain his composure. “He looked big. Tall, I mean. And I think he was white. He was wearing some kind of uniform.”

  “A uniform?” I said. “Like a police officer?”

  “Sort of.” Andy pointed toward one of the uniformed men nearby. “Like that.”

  “Mall security,” I mumbled. “That’s it. That’s how he was able to get close to her.” I turned to the officers who had driven us here. “Get me a list of all the mall security personnel. And custodians too. Anyone who might have access to their uniforms.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s good, Andy,” said Lien-hua. “Is there anything else? Anything at all?”

  He glanced at the crowd and then back at me. “I don’t know. She was looking through her purse, I think. That’s it. That’s all. She pointed at me, and I saw the guy turn his head toward me, but his face was all in the shadows. When I saw the uniform, I thought maybe I was in trouble or something, so I cut between some cars.”

  I looked at her car. It was an old beat-up Toyota Camry, typical college student car, probably with more than two hundred thousand miles. I knelt down and shone the beam of my Mini Maglite under her car and then the one next to it. I caught the glint of something behind the tire. I pulled on a latex glove, reached into the shadows, and grabbed the object. Lipstick.

  Ralph walked toward me. “Whatcha got?”

  I showed it to him.

  He turned to Andy. “You said she was looking through her purse?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would a girl be standing by her car looking through her purse?” I asked Ralph. “What would she be looking for?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Lien-hua spoke up. “Her keys. Maybe she was looking for her keys.”

  Why? Why here? Why then?

  “Her keys. She was looking for her keys,” I whispered, “but she couldn’t find them because they weren’t there.”

  “So where were they?” Lien-hua.

  I pointed to an empty parking spot about five meters away. “He had them. He had her keys. And he was ready for her at her car. Her car is older, probably doesn’t have keyless entry. People without keyless entry tend to take their keys out later, when they’re right next to their car. The lipstick tells me she was here when she tried to find them. Otherwise, if she had keyless entry, she would have pulled out her keys earlier, maybe halfway across this parking lot. Our guy knew that. Maybe he chose her just because of the age of her car. This guy is good.”

  “But why would he take her keys?” asked Lien-hua. “If he knew which car was hers, why not just grab her when she was getting into it?”

  I slipped the lipstick into an evidence bag and thought for a moment before answering. “Because he wanted to watch her look for them. He’s into it for the game. He likes to watch.” As I said the words, a shiver snaked down my back. “He likes to watch,” I whispered again.

  “And?” she said. “So?”

  I spun around. A crowd of people stood behind a police line about a hundred meters away. There were already half a dozen plainclothes men sweeping the crowd. So many murderers and arsonists return to the scene of the crime that it’s standard operating procedure to photograph the crowds. But our guy would know that. He wouldn’t be in the crowd.

  Where else? A car, maybe? Was he in one of the cars in the parking lot? I stepped onto the hood of the car next to me and scanned the other side of the parking lot. An Applebee’s restaurant. A couple fast-food joints. A Jiffy Lube. “I want this entire area closed down. Do it quietly. I don�
�t want to spook him. He’s here.”

  “In the crowd?” asked Ralph.

  “No, not the crowd. Somewhere else.”

  “How do you know?” said Lien-hua.

  “Because if I were him, that’s where I’d be.” I pointed toward the row of restaurants. “I want a sweep of every one of those restaurants. And we need to make sure there isn’t anyone in any of these cars.”

  That’s when I saw it. A walkway leading from the mall to a parking garage. It was perfect. You could look across the whole parking lot but then slide down and escape in either direction, to a car in the garage or back into the mall. Perfect exit route.

  As I trained my eyes on the footbridge, a man in a leather jacket and a baseball cap turned suddenly and began to walk back toward the parking complex.

  I pointed and jumped down from the car. “That’s him.”

  The guy was hurrying now, almost out of sight.

  “Where?” shouted Ralph, pulling out his weapon.

  “The walkway. There. Cut him off!” Even as I said the words I was sprinting across the parking lot, barking out orders to the officers standing around us. “Seal off the parking garage. Don’t let anyone out!”

  A few officers gawked at me for a moment and then joined me in pursuit. “Cut him off in the mall!” I hollered. The officers split off and raced to the mall entrance.

  I burst through the door to the parking garage and scanned the area. Nothing. Then I heard footsteps in the stairwell. I leaned over, looked up, and glimpsed movement on the landing above me. “Stop! I’m a federal agent!”

  He didn’t stop but stepped through the doorway and disappeared.

  I exploded up the stairwell and pulled out my. 357 SIG P229. I threw open the door and stared at the rows of cars. No one. He had to be behind a car somewhere. Or inside one.

  “Step out with your hands in the air!” I swung the gun in front of me, leveling it with both hands, looking for a flicker of shadow, a trace of movement, anything. “I said, step out with your hands up!” My words echoed off the cement walls. No reply. My heart was hammering. He was here. He was close. I didn’t know if he was armed or not, but I had to assume he was.

  A car door clicked open three cars down. “Drop your weapon and put your hands in the air,” I yelled. “Now!”

  I could hear the whimpering voice of a young woman. And then the voice of a scared man. “Don’t shoot, mister!” A graying, overweight man in his underwear stepped out of a Ford Expedition with his hands in the air. “She told me she was twenty-one. I swear.”

  “Get back in the car!” I shouted.

  “But you just said-”

  He never finished his sentence. Before he could say another word, his neck exploded in a spray of blood as the echo of a gunshot rang against the concrete walls of the parking garage.

  18

  Confusion swept over the man’s face as his hand involuntarily flew up to his neck. He wobbled for a moment, then careened face-first onto the concrete. A moment later the girl was standing next to the car screaming. The shot had come from somewhere beyond them. I had no visual on the shooter.

  “Get down,” I shouted to her. “Back in the car!” I leveled my weapon. She scurried back inside and slammed the door, probably thinking I was the one who’d shot her friend. I could hear her wild shrieks, muffled only slightly by the doors of their SUV.

  “Shots fired!” I shouted. I hoped one of the officers had followed me into the parking garage and could hear me. I raced to the victim. “I repeat, shots fired!”

  Why did you shoot this man? Why would you kill this man? Still no visual on the shooter.

  I leaned over and held my hand against the victim’s gurgling throat. He was shaking slightly, starting to go into shock. The bullet had missed the center of his neck and passed through the side of it. There was a lot of blood, but the wound didn’t look fatal. It was a good thing our suspect wasn’t a great shot.

  “Sir, you’re going to be all right,” I whispered, hoping it was true, all the while keeping one eye on the cars in front of me. “Lie still. Don’t move.” With one hand I applied gentle pressure to the man’s neck to slow the bleeding, being careful not to press too hard or I might constrict his breathing. With the other I gripped the SIG and surveyed the parking garage. A pack of cops burst through the door.

  “Get down!” they yelled.

  “I’m a federal agent!”

  “Shut up. Drop your weapon!”

  Just then one of the men recognized me. “Wait, he’s one of us.”

  “Get me an ambulance,” I called out. “And the shooter is still in the building!” I pointed toward where I thought the suspect had run, the most sensible escape route. “Down there. Sweep down toward the exit.”

  The officers fanned out and began to search the parking garage car by car while I stayed with the injured man.

  “Hang in there,” I told him. “Help will be here in a minute.”

  Why did he shoot this man? Was he aiming at me? Did he miss me?

  Maybe our suspect wasn’t a very good shot. Maybe. But as I considered the possibilities, a chilling thought struck me: maybe he was an excellent shot. Maybe he knew that if he killed this man with a shot to the torso or to the head I wouldn’t have had to stop to help him. Or, if he hit him in an extremity, the gunshot wound wouldn’t have been serious enough for me to stop. But if he wounded him just right I’d have to make a choice-I’d have to choose between saving this man’s life or continuing the chase. Somehow, he’d thought of all that in the brief moment after this man stepped out of his car. Was that possible? Could he be that smart?

  Or maybe he knew this couple would be here. Maybe he’d planned it all in advance. I made a mental note to find out why this man and this girl were here on this night at this time in that parking spot. But the more I thought about it, the more I started to believe that the killer had planned it all out. He might have even waited on that walkway until I saw him there. He’s in it for the game. He likes to watch.

  I started to wonder how I could catch a guy who could plan his moves like this. He was smarter than I was.

  I stayed with the man who’d been shot until the ambulance arrived a few minutes later. There was a little confusion about which paramedics were going to take him to the hospital-apparently several vehicles had responded. Finally, two of the men lifted the gunshot victim onto a gurney and wheeled him away. We searched the entire parking garage complex, the mall, the parking lot, the restaurants. Nothing.

  The girl from the van was still screaming when they took her away. I wondered if she would ever be able to stop herself from screaming when she thought of this night. Some people can put events like this behind them and move on. Most of us can’t.

  Before leaving, I looked through the Ford Expedition they’d been in. A white pawn was sitting on the center of the dashboard.

  19

  After the search for the shooter came up empty, I realized there wasn’t much more I could do there that night. Local law enforcement didn’t really want us around, and even though we could have fought them for jurisdiction, we were already stretched thin trying to investigate all the other cases. It seemed like the best strategy was to let them take the lead on this and keep us updated. That meant I could get back to Asheville and spend tomorrow morning piecing together the overall pattern of the crime series.

  Since my shirt was soaked with the wounded man’s blood, I turned it in as evidence and bought a sweatshirt from one of the mall stores that was getting ready to close. After cleaning the blood off my hands in the bathroom, I went to sign the chain of evidence papers. That’s what I was doing when Ralph walked over to me, shaking his head.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You.”

  “Me?”

  “Yup, you. I need to brief the officers in charge here, Margaret is back in Asheville, and that puts you in charge.”

  I didn’t like where this was going. “In charge of what?”

&
nbsp; “Meeting with Governor Taylor.”

  “What?”

  Ralph shrugged his huge shoulders, trying unsuccessfully to look helpless. “He heard about the girl; wants someone to bring him up to speed. Word is he’s got a bunch of speeches next week on national security, and he doesn’t want to get blindsided by questions about serial killers in his own hometown.”

  I glanced at my watch: 9:41 p.m. “Does he know what time it is?”

  “I’m sure he does.”

  “Can’t this wait, Ralph?”

  He shook his head. “Governor Taylor is one person you don’t keep waiting. He’s spending this weekend at his private residence not far from here, just outside of town. It shouldn’t take you too long to brief him.”

  Great. He just had to say the b-word.

  “I’m not good with this kind of stuff, Ralph. You know how much I hate-”

  But he’d already turned around. “Take Lien-hua along. I hear he likes the women.”

  “Who likes the women?” asked Lien-hua.

  And before I had a chance to protest any more to Ralph, a car piloted by one of the governor’s security detail drove up, and Lien-hua and I reluctantly climbed in.

  “He just lives a few minutes away,” explained our driver. “‘Course, most of the time he’s in Raleigh, but a couple weekends a month he likes to come back home.”

  I listened to him but didn’t really listen. Mostly I was thinking about Jolene and the pawn on the dashboard and the killer who was smarter than I was. He put Jolene’s contacts into Mindy’s eyes. Why? I also wondered about the man he shot and the chain of events that had brought me to his side. Time and place.

  Time and place.

  After a few minutes, my thoughts drifted to the other side of the backseat, where Lien-hua sat silently watching the night slide past the car. I was a little disappointed the car was so roomy. I wished the governor had chosen to send something a tad smaller. A Harley would have been nice.

  We didn’t talk until we arrived at the front gate to the governor’s mansion and one of the sentries waved us through. That’s when Lien-hua turned to me. “Good work interviewing that kid back there,” she said.